ER waiting rooms defy stereotypes

From USA Today

Countering a popular belief, researchers say that communities with higher numbers of uninsured, Hispanics or non-citizens have a lower use of hospital emergency departments.
Instead, places with the highest levels of emergency department use are those with more elderly residents, communities where people have to wait a long time for appointments with their own doctors and places where a smaller percentage of the population is enrolled in HMOs vs. other kinds of insurance.

"Emergency room use is up across the population, including more middle-class folks with private insurance," says study author Peter Cunningham, a senior fellow at the Center for Studying Health System Change.